noun. Mimesis is a Greek word meaning "to imitate" (in fact the word imitate derives from this).
In literary terms, it refers to the imitation of nature or human behavior in art, particularly in poetry and prose. Refers is important here because if mimesis was simply imitation alone, then we'd probably just use the word imitation and leave it at that. The difference is the degree to which the artistic representation seems to become the person or thing it imitates. Hold on for a minute, this gets tricky.
A metaphor is a literary device that replaces one thing with another to say something unusual about something familiar. These are sometimes called the tenor--the unusual--and the vehicle--the familiar. If it "rains cats and dogs" the vehicle (rain) is compared in terms of the tenor (cats and dogs) and we can make the following inferences:
Cats and dogs fight and make terrible noises;
They are animals and so are strange, but are pets and so they're not too strange;
They and hard to control when they are fighting.
But how, exactly, were we able to make those inferences? What was the process that allowed us to replace the vehicle with the tenor and derive any meaning at all from the image in our minds?
This is where the magic of mimesis comes in. In a sense, metaphors create imitations that depend on the fact that they're fake in order to say something that couldn't be otherwise expressed. For the metaphor to work, we must simultaneously believe in the fake thing and also know that it is fake.
This is most dramatic in theater (that's why they call it drama!) where we know we're sitting in a theater watching people pretend and yet we can be completely caught up in the play's characters and narrative to the point where the theater and the stage seem to fade away and the play becomes "real". The quality of that feeling is called mimesis.
mimesis
noun.Mimesis is a Greek word meaning "to imitate" (in fact the word imitate derives from this).
In literary terms, it refers to the imitation of nature or human behavior in art, particularly in poetry and prose. Refers is important here because if mimesis was simply imitation alone, then we'd probably just use the word imitation and leave it at that. The difference is the degree to which the artistic representation seems to become the person or thing it imitates. Hold on for a minute, this gets tricky.
A metaphor is a literary device that replaces one thing with another to say something unusual about something familiar. These are sometimes called the tenor--the unusual--and the vehicle--the familiar. If it "rains cats and dogs" the vehicle (rain) is compared in terms of the tenor (cats and dogs) and we can make the following inferences:
But how, exactly, were we able to make those inferences? What was the process that allowed us to replace the vehicle with the tenor and derive any meaning at all from the image in our minds?
This is where the magic of mimesis comes in. In a sense, metaphors create imitations that depend on the fact that they're fake in order to say something that couldn't be otherwise expressed. For the metaphor to work, we must simultaneously believe in the fake thing and also know that it is fake.
This is most dramatic in theater (that's why they call it drama!) where we know we're sitting in a theater watching people pretend and yet we can be completely caught up in the play's characters and narrative to the point where the theater and the stage seem to fade away and the play becomes "real". The quality of that feeling is called mimesis.
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